Morrigan's Bite (Crow's Curse Book 2), page 2
I bowed my head. “I’m not sure about that,” I whispered. “I feel like everything’s changed. How do I go back to work? How do I get back into my life—get back in touch with my friends, my co-workers...How do I get back what I’ve lost? I mean, I’m not sentimental, but the idea of going through my life without ever seeing the sun...” As insignificant as it should have been, the idea of never having another beach vacation hit me in the gut.
“Hey.” Sorin turned me to face him. “You’re not alone. We’re going to figure this out. You’re under the protection of the entire Lusine coven. We will figure out some magical answer to this, okay?”
I rubbed my nose, trying to disguise a sniffle. “I don’t know anything about witches or magic.”
He touched my chin, lifting it to look at me. “With magic, anything is possible.”
I thought he might kiss me, then. My heart lifted as his head dipped. I closed my eyes, and a tear trickled down my cheek. Maybe I wasn’t lost entirely. Maybe I was still worthwhile, even though I was dead...
I felt his breath on my face. His hand stilled. I opened my eyes.
He was staring at my cheek.
I reached up to my cheek, rubbed it. My hand came away with blood instead of tears. Hell. Vampires couldn’t even cry like real people.
I pulled away from him.
“Garnet,” he began. Probably to reassure me that bloody tears weren’t really all that weird. But they were, and I was.
I shook my head. “I need some air,” I decided. Being cooped up in the cellar was doing nothing for my morale.
I slipped out the door, moving soundlessly across the rest of the basement floor. I flew up the rickety wooden stairs to the door that led to the outside. In this old Victorian, the entrance to the basement was external to the house...probably a good idea. It meant that I couldn’t get up into the house during the day and terrorize any witches, at least.
Night embraced me, and I sank into its cool embrace. Stars glittered overhead, tangled in the bare branches of the trees. Crickets chirped around me, inviting me deeper into the garden. It was autumn, and most of the flowers had long since browned and faded. But there were still asters that bloomed here and there like stars, wind stirring the leaves and tangling in their stems. Rodents scurried in the debris of the garden, through the withered leaves of hostas and drooping evergreen branches. I smelled decay everywhere: leaf rot and stagnant puddles and the coming of frost.
I glanced back at the house, one of a cluster of houses in a dead-end street in the Victorian District. Lights flickered on upstairs; I knew that I was never truly alone here, that witches watched me with eyes that were both awed and wary. Though the Morrigan had been a vampire, she was a goddess to them. A goddess who could help them win their war with the vampires.
I might have a piece of the Morrigan in me, but I was tired of fighting.
Footsteps crunched behind me. Sorin was following me. I didn’t want any apologies for the weirdness. I needed to feel the cold air on my face, to sink into anonymous darkness. I didn’t want looks of pity or to be judged.
I wanted to be free, even if it was only for a little while.
“Garnet,” I heard him say. But my head turned away from him, to the song of the night: the scrape of the breeze, the chatter of cats in the alley, the call of an owl.
I crossed the small garden, fast as a blown leaf. I scaled the iron fence, vaulting over the top. Without a second glance, I was gone, gone into the night, and accompanied by only the stars.
CHAPTER 2: IN THE COMPANY OF CROWS
I wrapped night around me like a cloak, sliding down the narrow, bricked streets of the Victorian District. I shied away from the sulfurous glow of the ornate streetlamps. I was afraid that if anyone saw me, they would know instantly that I wasn’t human, that something was wrong with me.
I didn’t know if that was a rational fear or not. My hair had changed from dark brown to a vibrant crimson. I self-consciously stared at a strand, picking at it with my fingers. Funny. My split ends were all gone. I guess that was one good thing about turning vamp. My skin seemed paler, and I could sometimes see veins sketched out beneath it, like ink under parchment. Maybe I could pass as a goth girl. I thought my eyes seemed normal, unless I got angry. Then, there was no hope of passing as human, since they blazed like hot coals. Never mind what happened when the full fury of the Morrigan rose in me. I rubbed the sleeves of my jacket. I remembered the feeling of feathers prickling from my skin. When I’d stood up against the vampires, I’d turned into a monster. I didn’t want that to happen, ever again.
Above me, cawing sounded softly. I looked up, finding a crow perched in a tree. He cast a sympathetic gaze down at me.
“Have you come to check on me?” I asked.
The crow bobbled its head. Whenever I was outdoors now, the crows came to keep me company. They were not the worst part of this Morrigan business. Truth be told, I enjoyed them. I felt less alone with a crow or three to talk to, and often kept treats in my pocket for them.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I whispered to it. “I don’t know how to be a vampire.”
The crow fluttered down to my shoulder. His talons gripped my shoulder, and he leaned against my head, grooming my hair with his beak. I could accept sympathy from the birds, but not from Sorin or the witches. How could I?
I fished into my pocket for some dry cat food and fed the crow. Delightedly, he crunched away at the treat, getting crumbs in my hair.
People still wandered in ones and twos on the streets, and I ducked out of their view. I passed the alleys, went beyond the streetlights, and wandered down to the docks.
When Riverpointe was a new city, the docks had been critical for commerce. The Victorian District was an island between the Copper and Frost Rivers, with the docks at the southernmost point. Those docks had been used by the once-wealthy who lived here to amass their treasures, and later used to ship glass materiel and booze during Prohibition. But now, the docks were silent and rotting. Nobody had any business being here anymore.
I walked across the soft wood with noiseless steps, to the point where the rivers converged. Behind me, the dim lights of the Victorian District gleamed softly. To my right and left, on the opposite banks of the rivers, Riverpoint glittered in all its glory. Factories, some half-shuttered, some still working, were lit in artificial light. I could see downtown from here, glitter reflecting on the glass of the skyscrapers. Further away, I could make out the clustered lights of the university, shining beneath bridges.
I crouched on the edge of the dock, gazing out at the water. I’d been told that vampires couldn’t cross running water, which was why the witches remained in the Victorian part of town. Here, the rivers created natural protection for them. I wonder how much that rule about running water applied to me. I had come here without incident, crossing a bridge. But maybe it was the water itself that was dangerous, not the passing over.
I scooted forward and dangled my feet above the water. I dipped the toe of my sneaker into the black water, testing.
A crow paced the dock and cawed at me. He walked up beside me and dropped a coin onto the moldy wood. I picked it up, smiling. The crows had always brought me gifts, from the time I was small. I’d saved them all, tucked them away in a shoebox under my bed. But that shoebox was now at my old apartment, and all I had were my pockets.
I continued probing the water with my sneaker.
“Am I going to burst into flame?” I murmured.
But I didn’t. Cold water penetrated the rubber sole and seams of my shoe. I felt vaguely uneasy at that, and pulled my foot back. When I was human, I could swim. I guess I wasn’t ever going to the beach again, unless it was at night...
A crow called, sharply. I was learning their language, and that sound was an alert. I whipped my head around to the source of the sound.
The crow gazed down the dock, intent and unblinking. He was focused on a man stumbling on the rocks at the edge of the dock. The man looked to be drunk, staggering over the jagged stones. From this distance, I could hear him muttering to himself.
I wrapped my arms around my elbows. I didn’t want to be disturbed. I swept up the dock, silent, while the man slogged along the muddy shore. I would have to try harder to find an unattended dock in the dark, so I headed toward shore to find another place to be alone.
He didn’t see me; I was high on the dock above him. He likely wanted to be alone, too, for I saw the glint of a pistol in his hand an instant before he pressed it to his temple.
“No!” I shouted.
But my cry was obliterated by the sound of the gunshot. That thunder rolled over the water, echoing, as the man crumpled and fell to the rocks.
I scrambled down the dock pilings to try to help the man. My breath whistled in my throat. It had always been my shitty Morrigan magnetism that drew blood and violence to me, even when I was human. I wished for all the world that I could give it back. I wish I could just exist in the world without chaos swirling around me.
The man had fallen face-down, his body half in the muddy water. I reached for him and dragged him to the algae-kissed rocks. He reeked of blood, soft and coppery. I turned him over, ready to perform chest compressions...
But there was no use. He’d used a high-caliber bullet that had zinged from his right temple to the left, breaking open his skull as if it were an egg. Oozing brain matter dripped out onto my hand. He wasn’t breathing, and I was quite sure that there was nothing I could do to summon breath in his chest.
I stared down at him. “What happened to you?” I whispered. I had never understood suicide when I was human; I had never understood what it meant to be so deep in a pit of despair that one couldn’t see a way to climb out. Now...now, maybe I had a better understanding of sorrow.
My stomach churned. I looked down to see the man dripping blood into the water. An atavistic hunger flared in me, bright and savage.
I pushed the man away and stood up. No. No, I would not drink human blood, no matter how much my body seemed to yearn for it.
The man slumped into the river, waves lapping at his shoulders. The water darkened near his head, a deeper black than the rest of the river.
I swallowed. The man was already dead. I wouldn’t disturb any evidence by...by...
I knelt at the water and cupped my hands. The crimson-stained water flowed into my palms. Lifting them to my lips, I drank.
A heady rush of power filled me, a brilliant flame that lit in my chest and suffused me with its heat. I felt more human then, flesh and warm, as if some remembered sun had touched me. I was nourished, grounded, as the bloody water sluiced down my throat.
I drank. And drank.
I drank until I heard sirens in the distance.
With effort, I tore myself away. I slipped away then, sliding beneath the docks, and sliding away into the dark with my shame.
I walked. I walked with the crows fluttering above me. I wanted to ask them how they managed to fly at night, but they seemed to be perfectly content to waddle along the sidewalks with me. As many as six crowded around me as I plodded along with my hands in my pockets. One paused to pluck at a bit of roadkill in the street.
I stared at it. Perhaps that was what I had become. Maybe that was the best I could hope for. I had come to Riverpointe to be a doctor, to heal people. Not drink blood and glower moodily from the shadows. But here I was, picking among the dead, like the crows.
I thought about my job. No doubt that was in jeopardy. Last thing anyone knew, I’d been abducted by Merrel from the hospital where I worked. The hospital would have figured out a way to cover my patients, but my friends, Carl and Kara, would be worried sick about me. They might even think me dead. I didn’t worry so much about my family; my father and my drug-addicted sister had enough issues of their own, and no one at the hospital had their contact info to notify them, anyway. Carl and Kara were my family, my colleagues. The witches had insisted that I contact no one until this vampirism thing sorted out, but I chafed against that requirement of their hospitality.
I walked for hours, eventually rewinding my way to the old Victorian house. I jumped up and over the back gate, more effortlessly and gracefully than before. The diluted blood I’d taken sang in my veins, and I felt perceptibly stronger. I didn’t like that, nor did I know how long the effect would last.
A woman sat in the garden on a bench before a large, dormant fire pit. She held a lantern in her hands. Or, at least, it looked a lantern. Upon closer inspection, I saw that she held a flame in her bare hand.
“Ariane,” I said, acknowledging her presence. As far as I’d been able to determine, she owned the house I occupied. She was High Priestess of the Lusine, governing the witches with Sorin. And I could see why. She was powerful, with the elemental command of fire.
She nodded toward me, the shadow from the bill of her baseball cap falling over her features. “Garnet. Sorin said that you’d left.”
I frowned. “I needed to take a walk. To think.”
She watched me with dark eyes that seemed to absorb everything. The fire continued to play in her fingers. A moth flitted in the dark, drawn toward it. “We were afraid that you wouldn’t come back.”
I shook my head. “Where else would I go?” I sat down on a bench opposite her, feeling leaden.
“The vampires want you, more than anything else.”
Anger lit in me. “They can burn.”
Ariane gave a half smile. She wiggled her fingers, and the fire went out. “Well, we tried that. We didn’t get them all.”
“I wish you had.” And maybe me with them, I silently added.
We sat in awkward silence for a few moments, before Ariane said, “We’ve done some research into your condition. None of the Lusine have been up close and personal with vampires since Prohibition, but there’s some evidence that there may be magical ways to keep the desire for blood in check.”
I nodded vigorously, and hope lit in my chest. “That sounds like a good idea.”
Ariane frowned. “But I don’t know how those would work with you. You’re much more powerful than any vampire that anyone has ever tried to muzzle before.”
I blinked at her.
Ariane sighed. “I confess that the spell workings we’ve found have been bindings, ways that witches have tried to imprison vampires. That’s not what we want to do.”
I lifted my chin. “Is there a way to cure me, do you think?” I was afraid to ask the question, but I had to know the answer.
Ariane looked down at her hands. Her fingertips still glowed softly, like embers in a fire, smoking like incense. “Not that we’ve uncovered yet. But we’re working on it.”
I knew what that meant. I’d said much the same to terminal patients. I always tried to leave those conversations on a positive note, to leave some hope.
I took a deep breath and pressed the topic. “Talk to me about these bindings.”
Ariane looked up. “We don’t want to hobble you. You need access to your power as Morrigan.”
I shook my head. “I want to be as normal as I can be. I want to get back to work and...and...leave all this behind.”
I was certain of that. The touch of a goddess was unwelcome in my life. All the Morrigan seemed to bring was blood and chaos. I didn’t want any of that.
Ariane’s eyes softened. “I don’t know if that’s possible, Garnet. You are so steeped in magic now... I know that you probably can’t feel it, but you shine brighter than a coven of witches at the solstice. You radiate power.”
I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes. “I don’t know anything about magic.”
“Then,” Ariane said gently, “perhaps it’s time you learn.”
ARIANE LED ME BACK into the house, to the main floor, which was lit brightly from within with lamps shrouded in brass and velvet and fringe. I shrank from the idea of being scrutinized by the Lusine coven. Ariane and Sorin had been kind to me, but the reactions of the others had run the gamut, and I’d remained in the basement to avoid them.
Gazes were heavy on me as I came into the parlor. Sorin was waiting there, sunken into a velvet settee. His eyes lit when he saw me, and he exhaled a sigh of relief. A half-dozen witches ranged around him, their eyes watching my every move. Not the whole coven, but the ones that seemed to live here. Ariane waved me into a chair and settled herself into another.
“Who let her out of the basement?” a woman muttered. I knew without looking that this was Jen. She was maybe ten years younger than I was, and I was inclined to give her a pass for being surly. She looked the part, dressed in black with a tattoo of a pentacle on the palm of her left hand. Her dark hair had been shaved on one side of her head, and her eyebrows had been penciled in perfect symmetry.
Ariane shot her a look. “Jen. Shut it. Garnet is our guest.”
“And our goddess.” A wire-thin, tall man with long hair draping over a hemp T-shirt bowed deeply before me. That was Reese. I was even more uncomfortable with his reaction than Jen’s.
“Not mine,” Jen whispered. It may not have been loud enough for Ariane’s human ears to pick up, but I sure heard it.
“Play nice, Jen,” a young man with a red mohawk muttered, elbowing her. Silver jewelry glittered at his eyebrows and ears. I knew his name was Max; I’d run into him feeding the neighborhood cats in the garden at night.
“We’ve got to figure out a plan here, folks,” Ariane said, steepling her fingers before her. Though she was only a few years older than me, Ariane had gravitas. Maybe it came with the fire. “Garnet and I have discussed attempting to bind her vampiric nature.”
“No,” Sorin blurted. “We can’t hurt her.”
“Nobody’s talking about hurting anyone,” Ariane said. “We’re not going to treat her like a vampire prisoner.”
